The Skybound Sea Read Online Free PDF Page B

last night. But his
had
been a voice full of certainty, full of justice and hatred and nightmare logic.
    Unless that hadn’t been his voice.
    A chill crept up his spine, became a frigid hand at the base of his skull. It gripped with icy fingers, sending a spike of pain through his body that did not relent until he shut his eyes tightly.
    And when he opened them again, the world was on fire.
    He was back on a ship full of fire and of enemies that lay dead on the deck, except for the one that held him by the throat and pressed a knife down into his shoulder. He was back in his world and he was going to die.
    And she was there. Short and slender, her green eyes wild and feathers in her hair. There was a bow in her hands and a hand around his throat and a blade in his shoulder and an arrow on the string and blood. Blood and fire. Everywhere. And she did nothing.
    He was going to die and she was going to do nothing.
    That wasn’t how it ended. He hadn’t died back then. Someone else knew that, but not him and not in this world. In this world, something else happened. He ignored the hand around his throat and the knife in his shoulder. He got to his feet and she was watching and she was screaming and her throat was in his hands and it felt like ice. And he started to squeeze.
    That hadn’t happened, either.
    He opened his eyes. That world was gone. The water was back and talking to him.
    “Ah
,” it said,
“I see.”
    “You don’t,” he replied. “You don’t have eyes. You don’t have a face.”
    “I can fix that.”
    The water stirred underneath. There was someone looking at him fromthe floor of the sea. A woman, not a pretty one. Her face was hard angles and her hair was white. Her chin was too sharp and her cheekbones were too hard. Her eyes were too blue.
    But it was a face.
    “Better now?”
    “You’re all the way down there,” he said. “How do I—”
    And suddenly, he did. The water gave out beneath him and he was floating down, upside down. He could breathe. That wasn’t too alarming; this
was
the fifth time. That which should not be possible was only impressive when it was not possible. When it was not impossible, then it was not possible to be impressed.
    He came to a halt, bobbing in the water as he looked into her face. She was smiling at him with a face that shouldn’t ever smile. Their eyes met and they stared. He asked, finally.
    “So,” he said, “am I dreaming, insane, or dead?”
    “Oh, Lenk,” she said, “you know you never have to choose.”
    He had memorized the length of one knucklebone.
    He used that to count down his hands. Three knucklebones across, six knucklebones down. Eighteen knucklebones, in total; possibly a few extra accounting for inaccuracy of the thumbs. If he counted the back of his hands, double that. His hands were as wide and long as thirty-six knucklebones in total.
    He had dainty hands. That bothered him.
    But all Dreadaeleon could think about as he stared at his dainty, disappointing hands was how much paper would be made out of his skin when he was dead.
    It didn’t take long for the trembling to set in, the surge of electricity coursing beneath his skin. Three breaths before blue sparks began to dance across his fingertips. Three breaths today. It had been six breaths yesterday.
    Getting worse
, he thought.
Can’t be too much longer now. How much do you figure? A month? Two? How does the Decay work, again? It begins with the flaming urine, ends with the trembles? Or was it something else? Reversal of internal and external organs? Probably. Dead with your rectum in your mouth. That’d be just your luck, old man. Still, better that you’ll be leaving soon so she doesn’t have to see you—
    “Well?”
    “What?” he blurted out suddenly at the sound of the woman’s voice. He grabbed his hand by the wrist and forced it out of sight.
    Asper looked at him flatly. She pointed to the corpse on the table.
    “I know
she
can wait forever, but I can’t.” She